Day 9: Parable Of The Cuckoo In The Nest

 

Parable Of The Cuckoo In The Nest

I

would like to tell you about the parable of the “cuckoo in the nest.” I am reminded of a 1975 psychological comedy-drama film entitled, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy who is a new patient at a mental institution. He was very different. He is called the proverbial cuckoo in the nest. When someone calls you “a cuckoo in the nest” it means that you are an intruder. The group that receives the intruder treats him or her as alien or different.

In the wild where there is real cuckoo and its eggs in the nest, there is more than meets the eye. The common cuckoo uses a sneaky strategy to raise its babies. A female cuckoo deposits the egg in a nest built by a bird of a different species. After dropping an egg, the trespassing mother cuckoo flies away. The host couple often accept the new egg. Indeed, they take care of it as if it were their own. Later, things turn nasty.

The imposter egg hatches faster than the host eggs. The imposter chick wants all the food and space and what it hates so much is sharing. So as soon as it gains enough strength, it accomplishes its task.

So, armed with a coup instinct, even if it could not yet see, it carries the defenseless eggs onto its back, to be tossed over the edge of the nest one by one. Sometimes there are other eggs that hatch just in time, but to no avail, the hapless chicks suffer the same fate just like the eggs. They are evicted from their native home alive. The baby cuckoo braces its feet on the sides of the nest, like a catapult, to push the hapless chick without mercy. Then, all by itself inside the nest, the horror story continues. What the cuckoo chick will do is to wait to be fed, nourished and cuddled by its blind foster parents.

Even as a grown-up cuckoo it continues to receive free delights from its foster parent standing on its back. On the ninth day of Season of Creation let us ponder this parable of the cuckoo in the nest how we can sometimes be like the blind foster parents and the selfish cuckoo. This is a kind of symbiotic relationship except that one party is harmed in the partnership. This is called brood-parasitism. Brood-parasitism can take place in one's spiritual life too when we cuddle the bad eggs. Cultivate a discerning heart when this happens. 8thWorker.us